Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 16:08:34 PM PDT

Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced a 10-year budget proposal that would essentially eliminate Medicare and Medicaid, replacing it with a voucher and managed-care system that would drastically curtail benefits for the poor, disabled and elderly.

"This is not a budget. This is a cause," Ryan said yesterday on Fox News. "We are here to try and fix this country's problems. If that means we are giving our political adversaries a political weapon to use against us... shame on them. We owe it to the country to give them an honest debate."

"Let's be clear: these are not simply 'cuts,' and this is not simply 'reform.' This is fundamentally abolishing Medicare as we know it and replacing it with a voucher system -- one with no cost controls which will force seniors to pay a greater and greater share of their medical bills out of pocket over time.

"While the Ryan Budget is a sweet deal for private health insurance companies and multi-millionaires, it breaks the faith with America's seniors and the tens of millions of working class Americans who have paid into Medicare their whole lives. It should not be passed."

The prospects for California would be pretty grim. Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries will lose their guaranteed benefits altogether. Currently, Medicaid is a shared responsibility between the federal government and states, which are required to provide comprehensive health care benefits to people in poverty. Ryan's plan turns the program into block grants for the states -- with no guarantees.

Cash-strapped states like California would likely be forced to drop beneficiaries from the rolls should the plan become law.

They are all multi-millionaires. I say that they all need to be removed from moffic e. We need these systems in place for what they were ment for. The nexct republican that wants to abolish it needs to be given a recall campaign so he/she knows how it feels to be messed with. ARE YOU WITH ME?!?!

I've seen what happens when You have not enough Vouchers, You either have a waiting list or a closed waiting list(Section 8 for the Poor, Seniors & the Disabled), As the amount of money going to these gets eroded year by year by Republicans, So I'm not crazy about vouchers at all.

I'd rather have all the Federal Medical Plans(Tricare, Medicare, Medicaid(Medi-Cal in CA), VA Medical, etc) combined into one do It all Medical Plan, It would get rid of most of the duplicated bureaucracies, As then enforcement efforts could be tightened with all the examiners from all of the different plans all under one roof, Thereby eliminating real waste & hopefully fraud by those so called Doctors offices/Medical Supply houses operating out of a Post Office.

Of course waste to the far right [infected]Koch-Republicans[/infected] is anyone who dares apply for what is their legal right to apply for, Which is wrong.

that all the winograd camp attacks are focused on bowen, but barely breathe a word about the more conservative, corporate hahn. this smacks of the same basic strategy of GOP donations to nader and green party spoiler candidates in the 2004 election.